Bruce's Disease (But not Really)
by Dalekwizard
Summary: He doesn't have a disease, but he does have a disease. Sort of. And trouble is now approaching! Sequel to Tony Can't Keep His Mouth Shut and Clint's Not So Good But Improving Week.


Bruce skirted around Steve with the ease of a big man used to hiding. He was on his way to his lab, one of the three that had survived, and Steve was eating his breakfast as he walked through the hallways. Jarvis had directed the good captain to the pantry and Steve had eaten cereal in the mornings since then. Bruce wondered idly why he wasn't eating more; didn't the serum increase the recipient's metabolism? If anyone was an eggs and bacon and everything on top kind of guy, he would have thought it would be the captain. He could, of course, be hiding from the odd food problems the group camped out in Stark's rapidly recovering building had been experiencing. Ever since the redhead had visited Clint a week ago, people had been turning into enormous canaries when they ate seemingly innocuous food. Now the atmosphere was rather like a bar – don't drink anything that wasn't fresh or you hadn't seen prepared.

Tony had turned back into a person after a bit and had wanted to investigate; Fury had SHIELD scientists on it, along with the issue of why his eyepatch was now a lurid, multicolored peace sign. He hadn't taken it off yet, so whatever came with the colorful Bob Marley reminder was worth the (careful) snickers.

Steve looked up at Bruce and perked up a bit; he wanted to talk. "Good morning, Doctor Banner. I hope you had a pleasant evening." The group tended to share dinner in one of the kitchens, but last night Bruce and Tony had been busy with one of their experiments. Something brought on by Tony's "Episode of Omniscience", whatever that was.

"It was...alright, I guess; not anything to complain about. How was your run yesterday?"

"It was good. A little odd, but it's getting better. I'm recognizing things, and I helped one of the construction crews again. Guy named Jefferson says hi; you were out with them the other day, I guess." The question was there, but not asked. Bruce didn't like going out in public.

"They were working on Third Avenue." The seemingly random comment was met with a nod of understanding; the Hulk had smashed quite a bit of Third Avenue.

"I was wondering if you wanted to go to the movies today? I know there's a few places that are still open." Steve was looking at him hopefully, and Bruce hated to turn him down. He knew the Captain was looking for a bit of solidarity in the world he was in, reaching with both hands to form solid bonds with the people he would be working with.

"I can't. I have some things running in my lab that absolutely have to be monitored today, or-" He broke off, grimacing. Steve was nodding hurriedly.

"I get it. No problem." Bruce felt even worse at that. Like he had kicked a dog when it just wanted to hang out by the fire. Still, he had to finish these today, or he would have to run the whole experiment again and weeks of work would be scrapped.

After a few more pleasantries Bruce headed upstairs to the lab Tony had designated as "his" (with no input on his part) and looked around. It was calm and white and sterile and _safe_, and that was the whole point. He wanted to think the experiment was the only reason he remained indoors while everyone else (except Tony) wandered the city and enjoyed their time off of anything resembling work. He was a practical man, though, had to be, and knew that he was hiding.

Hiding from the fact that once again, he had destroyed a sizable portion of New York, from the fact that he was back in an environment that made others available for the Other Guy to harm. Away from the fact that he liked these people, liked being here, loved it even.

Bruce had been away from civilization for so long that even the small things were wonderful. A consistently working fridge, plumbing, heating and cooling systems. This place wasn't made of small things; Jarvis and futuristic technology and Tony himself were Big Deals, and it was making his mind spin with wonder and curiosity and the urge to _know_ things. That urge was what had driven him to science in the first place, what had driven him, eventually, to gamma radiation. It had been a catalyst that turned him into what he was today.

He shifted his weight restlessly and reached out for the petri dish on his desk. Before his hand closed on it, a voice cleared its throat and said "Wotcher, Bruce!" Bruce tensed and spun around, his heart rate quickening and his legs readying themselves to run. How had they snuck past Jarvis? And who knew his name? He had faded away when he turned into a monster; most people didn't know he existed anymore.

Bruce stared at the young woman in front of him uncertainly. She was maybe twenty five and stood with the ease of someone well trained. But her hair was bright, bubble gum pink. "Jarvis?"

"Yes sir. She appeared where she is only a moment ago. I have already notified Mr. Stark." Not Director Fury, Bruce noticed. The fact that Tony wasn't barging in here with a million and three questions as to how the woman had gotten through his state of the art security systems meant that he was out and about in the city, and Bruce already knew the other Avengers were similarly unavailable. He was on his own.

"May I help you?" He refused to acknowledge the fact that she knew his name; it gave opponents a power over you if they knew something you didn't. He had learned that in the Third World countries where bartering could be deadly, where one wrong word and people thought you would report them to the police and took steps to prevent that.

"Yeah, mate, don't touch that dish there. Himself says it's mutated into something pretty deadly. Something about whatever it is that the suit man is cooking upstairs." She grinned, and started wandering around the lab as Bruce stared at his cultures in alarm. They had been skin samples from the Other Guy, and he was looking to see how they reacted to certain types of cancer; the Hulk didn't get sick, but maybe there were cures hidden in his impenetrable hide. He hadn't considered that Tony's project might have...adverse consequences. Bruce himself was probably safe, though, and he turned to look at the woman with a frown.

"Why let me know? I don't have to worry about stuff like that. Small benefits."

"Himself said you'd ask that. There was a big to-do about whether you should be warned or not, because he's getting annoyed with the bloke, but apparently if you touched it the thing would mutate even more and be contagious. So no more people for you. Pretty much ever, because it doesn't die, according to the big man, and he's pretty miffed about that." She grinned even more and her hair flashed a nauseating shade of lime green before fading to a pleasant mint.

Bruce stared at her hair, fascinated, even as most of his mind ran through the ramifications of no human contact ever again and wavered over whether it was worth it. He didn't really have a clue about the rest of the statement, but that part he got. "Um..right. What's your name?"

"I'm Tonks. Metamorphmagus and auror extraordinaire, currently deceased." She took great pleasure, apparently, in seeing his face work in strange ways as he tried to process that statement, because her nose slowly expanded on her face to the size of a baseball and turned a vivid turquoise with lemon spots.

"Right. Can you tell me anything that makes sense?"

"Nope. Not really. I mean, I've told the truth, so far, and truth is the most important thing, sometimes. Can't change the truth. But not sense like you mean. But I would tell you to get one of the robot things to disintegrate the germ stuff." She must have seen the uncertainty in Bruce's face, somewhere, because she frowned at him, then, and her countenance grew more foreboding. The nose shrank down to a normal, flesh colored piece of cartilage, if more hawklike than before.

"You listen to me, Bruce Banner. You are a wonderful man who has had bad things happen to him. You are not a monster. You are attached to a semi-tame lion who is more likely to run from humans than to attack them, unless they're thick enough to attack him first. And you will get those robots right now and throw that thing out." Bruce looked at her for a moment. It wasn't a great speech, but it was very smooth, like she had made it, or one like it, many times for years. Seeing his question, Tonks smiled a bit. "My husband's a werewolf. You would not _believe _the melodramatic pain that went on for _years_ before he agreed to marry me. To clarify, though, he actually would attack innocent people if he didn't take precautions. You just have a really big tantrum."

Bruce would take offense at her calling his destruction of New York a tantrum, if she hadn't said werewolves were real. That presented a host of opportunities, in the realms of _what the hell_ science that had pulled him in to begin with. Then-

"Wait, you married a werewolf?" Of course, looking at her with her mint green hair and her trained movements, he could believe it. But why chain yourself to something so dangerous, something that would be a burden on you and them and make you both miserable after a time?

"I did." It was simple. It just was. She had married a werewolf, and it was what was. "He was the best man I ever met, the bravest, the kindest, smart, determined, and a werewolf. So what?" This definitely was a familiar argument. People had argued against her and she had still married her werewolf. And he was an amazing person.

As Bruce watched her thoughtfully, Tonks looked at her hand, annoyed. "Already? Really? I have a mini Remus right here and he's got all _kinds _of issues. And I know you can hear me, so sod off a bit." Whatever she had in her hand – Bruce thought it looked like an enormous golden coin – didn't respond the way she wanted, because her nose became a pig's snout and she snorted at it, exasperated. "Fine, mister 'gotta follow all the rules cuz I'm the boss now'. On my way." She looked over at Bruce one more time and walked toward him. She tripped on the way. What the hell? She was trained and the floor was flat. What had she tripped on? "Gotta go, Brucie. Try to not be stupid, okay?" And she was gone.

Bruce stood there a moment and then told Jarvis to have Dummy get rid of the cultures. He walked out the door of his lab and out the doors (not the walls, because Tony insisted that doors were for walking out of and it was the principle of the thing; of course, Tony was constantly creating new holes in the walls, so he wasn't really someone to listen to. Still, Bruce had been the one to do the most damage in the building, so he made sure to walk out the doors) of the tower – which had been replaced earlier in the week – and went looking for Steve. He found the Captain working with a crew that was repairing an apartment building and talking to a man with long hair, pulled back into a pony tail.

When Bruce walked up to them, the pony tail guy waved and headed off. Steve gave Bruce a ready smile and a welcoming, "Doctor Banner! I thought you had to go to the lab."

"I've told you, Steve, it's Bruce. And I'll have time to do them later. We're on vacation. I thought you were going to the movies."

"I was, but Black and I got to talking, and I decided to stay and help." Steve looked around for the man he had been speaking to, but he wasn't anywhere to be found in the crowd. "He must have gone to another project."

Bruce looked at him for a moment. Someone able to talk to a man who was out of his time was a wonderful gift, something to be cherished, and Steve had still dropped everything to talk to him instead. Steve looked cheerful, like he hadn't for the past week. It looked like both of their changed plans had been to their benefit this morning. Truth be told, he had forgotten completely about his cultures (the non deadly ones), but what he said earlier was true. He had time enough for it later.

LINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEBREAKLINEB REAKLINEBREAK

Back in the lab, a redhead that was widely considered to be guilty for Fury's new fashion statement appeared in a ghostly form. He made himself solid quickly; Harry's eye would soon notice that he was causing trouble and he'd be called back. He grabbed two things from the lab: The deadly cultures went into his pocket and the small hourglass necklace that Tonks had dropped – unbeknownst to her or Bruce – when she tripped went around his own neck, around his collar. He faded away, not having left a mark on Jarvis' scanners, but not before leaving several sweets on the desk. He wondered if the next canary would be green.


End file.
